holden for many of the choicest observations that I have imparted to you. This good man, that dares do any thing rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he lately dissected one strange fish, and he thus described it to me : "The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length; his mouth wide enough to receive or take into it the head of a man; his stomach seven or eight inches broad: he is of a slow motion, and usually lies or lurks close in the mud; and has a moveable string on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter of a yard long, by the moving of which,-which is his natural bait,-when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he draws other smaller fish so close to him, that he can suck them into his mouth, and so devours and digests them." And, scholar, do not wonder at this; for besides the credit of the relator, you are to note, many of these, and fishes which are of the like and more unusual shapes, are very often taken on the mouths of our sea-rivers, and on the sea-shore: and this will be no wonder to any that have travelled Egypt, where 'tis known the famous river Nilus does not only breed fishes that yet want names, but by the overflowing of that river, and the help of the sun's heat on the fat slime which that river leaves on the banks when it falls back into its natural channel, such strange fish and beasts are also bred, that no man can give a name to; as Grotius, in his Sopham, and others have observed. But whither am I strayed in this discourse? I will end it by telling you, that at the mouth of some of these rivers of ours, Herrings are so plentiful, as namely, near to Yarmouth, in Norfolk, and in the west country Pilchards so very plentiful, as you will wonder to read what our learned Camden relates of them in his Britannia, p. 178, 186. Well, scholar, I will stop here, and tell you what, by reading and conference, I have observed concerning fish-ponds. CHAPTER XX. OF FISH-PONDS, AND HOW TO ORDER THEM. PISCATOR. DOCTOR LEBAULT, the learned Frenchman, in his large discourse of Maison Rustique, gives this direction for making of fish-ponds. I shall refer you to him to read it at large; but I think I shall contract it, and yet make it as useful. He adviseth, that when you have drained the ground, and made the earth firm where the head of the pond must be, that you must then, in that place, drive in two or three rows of oak or elm piles, which should be scorched in the fire, or half burnt, before they be driven into the earth; for being thus used, it preserves them much longer from rotting. And having done so, lay faggots or bavins of smaller wood betwixt them; and then earth betwixt and above them and then, having first very well rammed them and the earth, use another pile in like manner as the first were: and note, that the second pile, is to be of or about the height that you intend to make your sluice or flood-gate, or the vent that you intend shall convey the overflowings of your pond, in any flood that shall endanger the breaking of the pond-dam. |